The Wellbrexa cover-up that kickstarted CBS‘s Matlock has now been exposed and its orchestrators arrested in the two-hour Season 2 finale on Thursday, April 23. In true Matlock fashion, the episode had twists that made the fight for justice seem dead in the water just before a flashback revealed Matty Matlock’s (Kathy Bates) winning moves. Here, the creator of CBS’s Matlock, Jennie Snyder Urman, reveals when she figured out how the Wellbrexa storyline would end and teases the brand new mystery that will take its place in the Season 3 premiere in 2027 (the series is moving to midseason at Urman’s request). Warning: Matlock Season 2 finale spoilers ahead.
The Matlock Season 2 finale saw Matty, Olympia (Skye P. Marshall), and Julian (Jason Ritter) finally beating Senior (Beau Bridges), but justice came at a cost. Julian didn’t end up getting immunity in the federal investigation led by Lida Gutierrez (Gina Rodriguez) after Matty’s anonymous tip. Going to prison was a price he was willing to pay to make sure that his father and all of the partners at Jacobson Moore were held accountable for their complicity in the Wellbrexa cover-up. As the finale revealed, it wasn’t just Senior and Julian and some assistants involved in the opioid study scandal. All of the Jacobson Moore partners, except Olympia, knew what Senior did, and they did nothing about it. Matty and Olympia, with Julian and Lida’s help, took them all down in one fell swoop, and Julian accepted full responsibility for his part in burying the study, saying being arrested was “worth it” to bring his father to justice.
Halfway through the finale, it looked like all hope was lost after the reveal that Senior faked his dementia. Eva (Justina Machado) also knew all of his secrets, including the one about trying to frame Matty, Olympia, and Julian. But a flashback revealed the nail in the coffin: Matty planted a recorder pen in Senior’s pocket that recorded his confession about Wellbrexa. It was a nod to Season 1, when Matty spied on Olympia with the same tool.
Julian and Senior are going to jail. Matty and Olympia are starting their own law firm. Edwin (Sam Anderson) told Sarah (Leah Lewis) and Mrs. Belvin (Patricia Belcher) Matty’s real identity. Here, Urman breaks down the “big reset” of a finale and teases what’s to come with the new mystery and the Wellbrexa fallout in Matlock Season 3.
You really know how to meter out your reveals in a story, it’s impressive. Did you know from the beginning of Matlock that this is how the Wellbrexa storyline would end?
Jennie Snyder Urman: No. We knew about midway through the first season that it would be definitively Senior. The thing that I was going back and forth on, when I wrote the pilot, was who it would be. Once we committed to Senior, we knew a certain amount of things would be true: that we would end it, we would have someone be arrested, we would make that Julian’s hero moment, so I would say mid-last season, we were kind of driving towards this, and then a lot of the specific storytelling pieces we find along the way.
Were you trying to decide between whether it would be Senior and Julian?
In the first season, we were deciding between Senior and Julian, and then we were like, it’s got to be Julian who removed it, because it means more, and interrupts more, and is so much more dramatic. And then in the storytelling of this year, we wanted to activate Julian, have him know what was going on, then we wanted to start rebuilding that relationship unexpectedly between him and Matty in slow, slow pieces, so that she could get to the point where she’s saying, “Maybe we could lay down the sword,” you think it’s believable that he means something to her. And we knew that Olympia was going to want to pivot, that Matty was focused on justice, Olympia was going to want to save her husband, they would both focus on Senior. So, making certain choices in the first season necessitated certain decisions in the next one, and then it was just about how that would unfold and unfurl.Yeah. I work with the writers for the first two weeks, and we plan out the whole season, a lot of detail, and then we write that up into this document that I pitch to the studio network, and it’s 20 to 30 pages. It’s the season laid out, and she gets that, too. So, she knows all the big moves, and all of the pieces, and all of that, and I sometimes pitch a little bit to her, but it’s better to give her this document, because it’s so complete, and it goes through the emotion, and the actual logistics, and the crime, and the cases, so, I shared that with her.
How did she like the twist?
Oh, yeah, she liked the twist. She was really, really happy with the finale, which makes me happy.
It’s pretty impressive how you make everything work out, and the touch that I really liked is that what gets Senior in the end is the recorder pen, just like in Season 1.
I’ve got to say, I resisted that. I was like, “Wait, no, we’re going back!” And they were like, “No, it will be good,” and so, thankfully, I had a great room of writers. But yeah, it’s the recording pen, you go back to that. I really I resisted that for a while. The hardest thing to figure out was how does she stay Matlock and making sure that was a choice that resonated, that came from an emotional place, not a story logistics place, because that was the only piece.
That piece, I had originally thought, oh, that’s the end of the show. But if that’s coming out, she would have to be part of it, so from there thinking about what would happen to her life was important, but then also rooting it in the friendship that you don’t have to come forward in Olympia saying that to her, and Matty realizing what Matty Matlock meant to her, and who it allowed her to be in the world, and how she interacted with people differently, and so people interacted with her differently.
We knew we had to solve it, we didn’t know how it would be solved. I was really proud of the work that the writers room did in getting that to be really the emotional crux of it, and really unpack what this living under this other name has done and meant to her, and not just a gimmick, but it’s given her something real emotional.
Just to clarify, you said that you imagine her dropping the Matlock persona would be a series end thing?
Yeah, I always knew certain people would know who she was. Olympia, and then Julian, but I didn’t think that it would be out in the open that she could be Kingston. But then, once we started breaking this, the ending, and she’s going to go to The New York Times, it was like, well, she would have to give them her real name, or would she? That became the question, because when I was originally thinking about the ending of the series, I had thought it was going to be, “I can lay down my sword. I think my daughter brought me here to you.” That was going to be the ending, but really, we came to that at the end of the second season, with their friendship. Olympia and Matty’s friendship was forged in fire and meant so much, so we were able to get them to that point.
Then we had to solve the, how does she stay Matlock, and then what that’s opening up is really interesting things for our third season. So sometimes when you get to where you thought you were going to land, it pushes into, oh my gosh, what’s new? What’s underneath that? Now what? It’s leaving us with a lot of fresh snow in the third season, and I don’t like to get bored. I don’t like to hold secrets so long so that they just lose. I like to see what happens when the secret’s out there, and then how do people act, and what conflicts come out. It’s letting us keep our storytelling fresh while still, of course, we have a case of the week. That’s, to me, the only part of the show that I want to be predictable, is that we have a case of the week.
Where does the show go from here, now that Wellbrexa is over? I wonder if we’re going to have a trial for Julian and Senior in the future? Is that storyline continuing?
Those things will happen, whether they’re both on trial… There’s specific things in those trials, so those things will happen. But there is a new mystery, and it comes in quite organically as a thread from the old, but not related at all to the old, so it feels fresh. I don’t want to say how it comes in and how they make their decision to interact with it, but it is set up.
Can you give any hint as to what the mystery is?
It’s probably in insurance/healthcare.
Interesting. So, adjacent, familiar, but new.
Adjacent, but new, yeah. I don’t want to say anymore, because we have to bury a big surprise at the end of that premiere.
And you’re moving to midseason, so your premiere is sadly far away.
Sad for audiences, but actually really good for me and the writers, because I want us to plot this new mystery and make sure it’s airtight. We had a lot of pieces going in, so we really had to create this new piece of it. I feel lucky that the network’s giving us time to get it right, because I don’t want the quality to drop, or anything like that.